Fragility
by silverthorned
Summary: Yin and yang and being breakable. Season 6 up to


Title: Fragility  
Author: silverthorned  
Rating: PG  
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, creator.  
Category: Spike/Buffy  
Summary: Yin and yang and being breakable. Season 6 up to "As You  
Were."  
  
*  
  
She was in heaven, she said. He tries hard to understand what  
that means, but all the connotations and connections in his head  
only latch onto fragmented bits of poetry and prose, leftovers of  
an education he can barely remember, much less desire recalling.  
  
Those pretty phrases and overblown sentiments obscure the  
knowledge he avoids like holy water. Hiding the truth, they grow  
thick and dark, a jungle of deep greenery. He rests in the  
obsidian night they create, but he can smell the sunlight,  
persistently battering.  
  
In heaven, she said and walks away from him. He watches her go  
into the sunlight that flows around her, yet doesn't seem to touch  
her. He closes his eyes, dazzled, and the glowing afterimage  
burns with pointillistic ferocity.  
  
She is an angel without wings. Perhaps they were torn from her  
when she left the grave.  
  
He curses himself bitterly for his fanciful tendencies and angrily  
stands. He wants to go after her, to offer her more than silence.  
He wants to say all the words that, maybe said, would sound less  
like crap and more like comfort.  
  
She'd never accept them. He knows that, as well as he knows that  
if he did, he would kill what life she has left in her eyes. So  
he paces in swift steps, stopping short of the line between shadow  
and light, pierced once again by the thought that they are as  
separate in design as the day and night. As angels and demons.  
  
He stops his pacing and sighs heavily. He looks again to where  
she no longer is and turns his back, going back the way he came,  
into the shadows.  
  
Nights go by and still he keeps his silence. He still sees her as  
adrift, even when her sharp wit hides the darkness deep within.  
Her skin is sickly grey, her eyes are lost, and he watches the  
deterioration with concern.  
  
She fades. He can feel it under his fingers, the slow leach of  
color.  
  
It was a mistake, he knows that now, but she still sleeps in his  
arms, still seeks something from him. In the part that hopes, he  
thinks he knows the words for that something. Balance.  
Acceptance. Love. Life. Trust.  
  
He tries to give her these things, these expressions that are more  
than the sum of their parts. Yet when he looks into her eyes,  
when they are face to face, hip to hip, she is far away. He makes  
love to her. She does not make love with him.  
  
Yet she trusts him enough to sleep in his bed. To lie beside him,  
her slender back to him, her neck inches away from his mouth. It  
is a tenuous thread, that trust and he could sever it as neatly as  
the gossamer silk of a spider's web.  
  
He has become addicted to the steady rush of blood in her veins,  
to the pulse that runs like quicksilver in her neck, a soft column  
of ivory marble, blue veins like sapphire buried deep within.   
Desire mingles with hunger, a hunger that has little to do with   
his nature and more with the life that clings stubbornly in her   
small body.  
  
He knows that is why he would never betray her trust in making her  
like himself. It would be so easy to test the tensile strength of  
her will, to push until it snapped, bent past the point of  
absorption.  
  
He once desired to sap the strength from her, to drain her of life  
in an act of instinct and raw emotion. He's come so close so many  
times that he knows the limits now.  
  
He gathers her close to him, her soft hair beneath his chin, her  
bare skin hot against his chest, his arm beneath her breasts. She  
shifts, minimally, murmuring breathy syllables of nonsense. He  
closes his eyes and wonders if she knows his limits, how far she  
can push until he breaks. How much he can trust her not to test  
his fragile control.  
  
How much they could hurt each other.  
  
End. 


End file.
